Below USD$300 & Quad Core from Huawei

If you are looking for a cheap and good quad-core Android, you may wish to consider the Honor 2 Quad Core U9508 from Huawei. This is no ordinary run-of-the-mill android phone, as you would see later. This phone was announced sometime late last year, and it has appeared near my place most recently (or maybe in Dec 2012, it’s just because I did not actively go around searching for it).

The Huawei Honor 2 phone is a very reasonably priced Quad-core offering from Huawei. Using its K3V2 Hi3620 1.4GHz Quad-core processor with 16-core graphics processor, it performs quite favourably with the other competitors. In fact, it outperforms other phone models with competing dual-core and quad-core processors. The following shows the benchmarking from engadget, and while it is not the “fastest”quad-core processor on the planet, it held up well with its bigger and more expensive competitors. Here’s the comparison was with Quad XL (which also uses the K3v2 processor):

	Huawei Ascend D1 Quad XL (K3V2)	HTC One X (Tegra 3)	Samsung Galaxy S III (Exynos)	LG Optimus G (Snapdragon S4 Pro)
Quadrant (v2.0)	5,210	4,906 (Sense 4.0); 6,369 (Sense 4.1)	5,189	7,628
Vellamo (v2.0)	1,530	1,617 (Sense 4.1)	N/A	N/A
AnTuTu	12,114	11,030 (Sense 4.0); 11,517 (Sense 4.1)	11,960	11,230
SunSpider 0.9.1 (ms)	1,528	1,773 (Sense 4.0); 1,741 (Sense 4.1)	1,460	1,312
GLBenchmark 2.5 Egypt Offscreen (fps)	14	9.7 (Sense 4.1)	N/A	N/A
CF-Bench	13,298	13,233 (Sense 4.0); 13,750 (Sense 4.1)	13,110	14,398

 

Weighing in at about 145g (5.11oz), it is reasonably light, with a dimension of  134 x 67.5 x 10.5 mm (which is a little fat compared with many of its competitors). However, it does sport a IPS LCD with 16M colors, and displays a resolution of 1280 x 720 pixels on a 4.5 inches screen. That translates to a dpi of 326, which is consider “retina”, and the same as iPhone 4x, and iPhone 5 which are also 326 dpi. It supports external storage of up to 32GB (which is great), and while it sports only a 8GB internal storage, it compensates for its runtime by providing a 2GB RAM. That’s not bad at all.

Other than the typical GPRS and EDGE capabilities, it supports HSDPA @ 21.1 Mbps and HSUPA @ 5.76 Mbps, and also Wifi 802.111b/g/n + DLNA. It also comes with Bluetooth v3.0 with A2DP profile. As with more Androids, it comes with a micro-USB port for charging. In terms of camera, it sports a BSI 8-megapixel back camera that produces 3264×2448 pixels photos and comes with autofocus and LED flash. It also supports geo-tagging, touch focus, face detection, HDR and video at 1080p@30fps, which is great. The front camera does 720p@30fps, which is more than enough for most people.

In terms of sensors, it comes with accelerometer, gyro, proximity and compass. The availability of both A-GPS support and GLONASS means that your location would be more easily locked on, using 2 of the world’s most popular GPS systems in the sky.

The phone comes with a reasonably sized 2230 mAh battery, so it should last for a day or two based on moderate usage. And the price? $300+ USD, depending on where you get it from. I have seen them from $330 onwards.

Specs are shown below, for your convenience:

GENERAL

2G Network GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900
3G Network HSDPA 850 / 900 / 1700 / 1900 / 2100
SIM Yes

BODY

Dimensions 134 x 67.5 x 10.5 mm (5.28 x 2.66 x 0.41 in)
Weight 145 g (5.11 oz)

DISPLAY

Type IPS LCD capacitive touchscreen, 16M colors
Size 720 x 1280 pixels, 4.5 inches (~326 ppi pixel density)
Multitouch Yes

SOUND

Alert types Vibration, MP3 ringtones
Loudspeaker Yes, with stereo speakers
3.5mm jack Yes

MEMORY

Card slot microSD, up to 32 GB
Internal 8 GB, 2 GB RAM

DATA

GPRS Yes
EDGE Yes
Speed HSDPA, 21.1 Mbps; HSUPA, 5.76 Mbps
WLAN Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, DLNA, Wi-Fi hotspot
Bluetooth Yes, v3.0 with A2DP
USB Yes, microUSB v2.0